Good things

Last week one of my students asked me if I had any good news.  I said, "Tomorrow is Friday?"

He said, "No, good news for TODAY."

I had nothing.

I have had a hard couple of weeks.  My patience is worn thin because I'm distracted and overwhelmed and I don't like it.  I don't like being busy or overwhelmed.  I like margins and quiet and I haven't had enough of either.

I feel a little ashamed that I have been struggling.  Some people have actual problems and mine are mostly in my head.  They are still real though.  They are still robbing me of sleep.

So maybe they are actual problems, just I wish they weren't.

I don't know.

There are good things in my life though and I need to remember them more often and let go/accept/process and move on from the rest.

Every once in awhile Emma texts me something from years ago that she saw on my blog and it makes me smile because it is a memory recorded that I would otherwise have forgotten.  

Here are some good things I want to remember.  Good things about right now.

• Me trying to keep my face neutral during our Google Meet Sunday School class when funny texts from my boys keep popping up.  I could put my phone on do not disturb but sometimes it's the only thing that gets me through Google Meet Sunday School class.
• We have daffodils and off and on snow and a dramatic sky.  Spring in the mountains.
• Adam and I were the only ones home and we had cheese and crackers and fruit for dinner and that is my perfect dinner.
• Mark had to speak in church and he was so nervous he would barely talk to me all morning and then he walked right out of the chapel after speaking.  He's like a human mic drop.  (But his talk was a good one.)
• Mark leaned over and told me he could hear me judging someone who wasn't wearing a mask.  I said, "Are my thoughts that loud?"  Seriously.  Just wear a mask.
• Emma is moving home sooner than I thought.  No one can be uncheered by that.
• A ministering interview with one of my friends turned into an hour chat session and I loved it.  She looked at the clock and said that she needed to leave before I turned into a pumpkin.  She knows me and my early bedtime.
• Yesterday I had a lot of ministering interviews and I'm blown away by how good some of these ladies are.  I want to be like them.  I have a long ways to go.
• Emma was our only extra yesterday.  We looked at some pictures on Family Search Braeden had told us about.

Here's a picture of Adam's grandpa holding Adam's uncle and he looks so much like Braeden!

I took pictures of pictures in dim light so they aren't great, but here's Braeden:

My only explanation is that we must have had a nanny back then because there's no way I was that young. 

Emma and Adam and I looked over the scrapbook of the first year of Braeden's life.  It's a pretty low quality affair, filled with my earnest efforts to document.  I am glad we have it though.

Mark

January 2009 at the Canadian border.  We went to the Vancouver Olympics.  

 

What would this post be without a gratuitous picture of Mark's little boy cuteness?

It would be nothing.

Last night Mark and I had a date to look at the new student orientation stuff from USU.  I want to be involved for my own peace of mind mostly.  I know nothing about that place.  When I got home from school, we visited a little. I caught him up on all the texts I'd sent Fam-a-lam that he hadn't read.  He wondered if he should go on his bike ride earlier or later.

He went on his bike ride and I sent a few emails and ordered Adam's birthday present.  Mark came home and we made pancakes and Adam came home briefly and then went to a church meeting.  

Mark and I went through a bit of the orientation materials.  I said, "I need to go to Walmart, you want to come?"

And he said yes.

Nothing makes you realize that your teenagers are grown ups like when they are willing to go on an errand with you.

We chatted the whole way.  I told him five things we needed to remember to pick up at the store.  (On the list were Skittles because my Skittle machine is running low and I don't want to know how those children would turn on me if I cut them off.)

Also on the list was makeup and I looked at the possibilities with the same stupefied expression I always get before I gave up.  Mark put an arm consolingly around me and said, "Just have Emma get it for you."

We talked about the stimulus package and a podcast he listened to and the new custodian who vacuumed exactly 1/4 of my classroom today and the police/SWAT team/ shooting situation that was alarmingly close to our house last night.  Mental illness + guns are not a winning combination.

We talked about his diabetic supplies and we talked about college and spring break and I told him I wondered if my grandpa, who had gone to USU, was looking down fondly from heaven at him.

He said if he was looking down on anything, it was probably drive in movies.

When we got home, Mark carried everything in and put it away and started the dishwasher (because he'd forgotten to earlier).  Then he said he wanted to go hang out with his friends.  

I said, "Be home by 10:00?"  School night and all.

He said, "Yeah, I'll text Dad."

Which is code for:  it will be later than 10:00.  Adam is the one to text if you want to stay out late and I'm the one to text if you want to skip school.  It took Mark 30 seconds to figure that out.

So he went off to Joey's and I felt like something had been restored in my life.  Just an evening with Mark.  It's all I need sometimes.

My mom

Yesterday when I got home from work my mom and Olivia were here.  They are in the area this week while my mom is having treatments at the Huntsman Center.  Marianne was in town with my mom for a few days last week and Olivia this week and my dad is trading her tomorrow.  I'm glad I got in on a little bit of time spent together too.

We visited and laughed and told stories.  Adam brought us dinner from Porky's (Hawaiian pulled pork if you're ever in Lehi...).  

It was a lovely evening together but I think the best part of all was that I got to hug my mom for the first time in over a year.  She's been vaccinated now (and so have I) and she said, "I'm hugging now."

It made me cry a little.

I know.  Shocker.

Times they are a changing

Yesterday Marianne texted me because I hadn't blogged.  She worries I've fallen off the face of the earth when I don't post something.  I am fine.  But I had been through something.

I was sick on Sunday.  More sick than I've been in a very long time.  It wasn't pretty.  Braeden asked me if it was worse than Covid.  It was.

I think the recovery will be more swift though!

Anna said that after my stressful week, maybe my body had just decided to call it quits.

Maybe.

Last week I didn't sleep much and I felt lots o' stress.  I was circulating around the reality of my kids growing up and encountering uncertainty at work.  (A great recipe for peace of mind, am I right?)  We knew that we were losing a third grade teacher because our numbers are down.  We knew that the teacher would still have a job at the school, but we were all stressed with the uncertainty.

I figured it would be me, as the least senior member of our third grade team, who would be relocated and I was right.  I found out on Friday that I'm going to teach fourth grade next year.  

People at school keep checking on me and seeing if I'm OK.  I am.

I am sad that I won't be with my team.  We are a good team and they are my friends.  I'm sad I won't be with third graders because I like third graders.

I'm grateful about some things too.  I'm grateful that I get to still teach at my school.  I love my school.  A lot.  I'm grateful I get to keep my same classroom!  I don't have to move and that's huge.  I've never taught fourth grade so I might like it.  I might like it more than third grade.  Who knows?  I'm grateful that I will get to teach some of my current students another year.  I'm grateful that the fourth grade teachers are kind and act enthusiastic to have me on the team. I'm grateful that my principal feels slightly guilty about making me change grades so I took the opportunity to ask him to relocate my projector and he said he already had a work order in for it.

Gotta strike while the iron is hot.

So it's all a lot but it's also good.  I'm sad my boys are moving on to further their educations and I'm grateful my boys are moving on to further their educations.  I'm sad to not be teaching 3rd grade but I'm grateful to be a teacher at a school I love.

Albert Einstein said, "The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."

(I'll keep on working on it.  I want Albert to think I'm intelligent.)

Grateful Friday

Yesterday was a phenomenally, almost comically, bad day.

Seriously.

Some of my students got in a fistfight outside before the bell rang and we were off and running.

After a week of less than sleeping enough, my patience was thin.  My grammar lesson dive bombed.  It happens.  You think something will work and then it really.  Doesn't.

There were shenanigans in the bathroom after lunch recess when all the boys were in there and I was the one in the hall, yelling over their yelling for them to come out and get back to class.  They all insist it wasn't them but I can recognize their voices, the little turkeys.

We gave a fractions test (which I thought would go well!) in an online version because we want to prepare them a little for the platform of their online end of year testing.  None of our students did well (even though we know they get fractions better than that) and we commiserated together after school and tried to figure out how to reteach/ make the testing platform more accessible.

Then I was laminating and wrecked what I was laminating and the laminator.

Kate told me to go home and have a bubble bath.

Except I had a dentist appointment.

My appointment went long because he saw something on my x ray that resulted in a CT scan.  My body has decided to destroy one of my teeth from the inside.  He said it was "perfect" on the outside, but now I need a root canal.  I may lose the tooth and need an implant, but he's trying the root canal first.

Because my appointment went long, I missed my window of opportunity to see Mark (we were going to take him dinner).  Adam took him dinner and I talked to my dentist (who is also in my ward and a good guy and didn't mind when I kept saying, "But what would YOU do?" when he was telling me three possible treatment options).

I hurried home, cursing the slow drivers in front of me because I had ministering interviews and I was running late.  The interviews finally wrapped up and I ate the dinner Adam prepared for me at 8:30.

And Mark got home early!

I crawled under the covers and Adam read to me.  Mark came and lay in between us.  I looked into his beautiful root beer colored eyes and told him he was a handsome boy.

He said thank you and I said, "No, I was complimenting myself.  I made you."

He said, "Oh.  OK."

(Mark has root beer colored eyes, Emma's are more like milk duds and Braeden's are the gray green brown of river rocks.  My magnum opus trifecta.)

I wrapped my arms around Mark.  Even though he is bigger than me, that's easier to do than when he was little because he's way less wiggly than he used to be.  

Adam said it was maternal therapy, me hugging Mark.  

And it was. 

After a long and trying day, maternal therapy is what I needed.  And Adam.  I'm grateful he picks up all the pieces and puts them back together.  Always.

Insomnia

I don't want to brag, but I'm getting better at it.  

It used to be that if I had an awful night of sleep, the next night I would for sure sleep well.

Not now.  It's been days of poor sleep and who knows when I'll have a good night's sleep.

Here's what doesn't help:  reading statistics like getting good sleep reduces your risk of heart disease by 42%.

Injury meet insult.

Except now that I know that, when I'm wandering the house at 2:00 AM, I'll consider how I'm upping my risk of heart disease and I'm sure that will put me right to sleep....

Facebook

 I stopped going to Facebook regularly months ago and I really haven't missed much.  Occasionally I will get an email from Facebook telling me that someone I care about posted something and I appreciate that.

I saw this yesterday that my brother Enoch had shared.  

I can't imagine.

And I'm so very grateful!

Also, this made me laugh:

Monday my students didn't wear coats and came in from lunch recess complaining about how hot our classroom was.  

Last night it snowed.

The weather can be tricky; I hope they all bring coats.

But all of this is to say, sometimes Facebook delivers.